Assimilation And The X-Men By Shyminsky Analysis

In the essay “Mutant Readers, Reading Mutants: Appropriation, Assimilation, and the X-Men,” Shyminsky asserts that the X-men are appealing to an unintended audience: adolescent white, heterosexual males. Throughout this piece, the author points out that even though the mutants are freakish in nature, they still manage to assimilate into the human world because they resemble the rest of them, thereby appealing to the predominantly white nerds and geeks in society. The X-men are supposed to represent the “feared and hated” of society, a parallel to the minorities outside of the MCU. However, the author emphasizes that the comics fall short of that message by portraying these freaks of nature as not freakish enough. Shyminsky argues that the X-men

and Malcolm X respectively. This helps relate some details of the mutant activism to racial activism in today’s society, but Shyminsky quickly reassesses this point by saying that that is where the similarities stop. Further analyzing, the author states that even though Charles Xavier is a mutant pressing for peace among humans and mutants, he is not carrying his mission out to its full potential because he is still hiding his mutant students in his school for “gifted youngsters” rather than advocating for mutant rights like Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for black rights. However, the author does give X-men credit for including the Anarchist, a black mutant, and Jean Grey, a female mutant, quoting Milligan that this adds “a little black” to the characters, making the concept of the X-men ridiculous and incomplete to the readers. The X-men are white, heterosexual males who claim to be “oppressed,” and this feeds into the author’s argument that “reverse discrimination” comes into play. Because there is reverse discrimination, the author argues that this lead to X-men having a privileged audience who also felt oppressed, just not oppressed in the sense that they felt ousted by society for their physical

Even Nightcrawler, a blue-furred mutant, sided with the X-men saying that the Morlocks rely on “their oppressions as a source of identity.” Morlocks, as non-human-looking mutants, most closely identify with the minorities in modern society. Treating them as the antagonists of the comics may have driven away the X-men’s intended socially-oppressed audience. Shrylinsky cites the opinions of Morpheus Reloaded and Julian Darius in order to provide more authority and credibility that the X-men are not actively fighting for social justice and mutant rights. Their input further boosts that the X-men do not fight against their oppression, rather they fight against the radical mutants who fight for their rights, making the X-men “anti-revolutionary.” Other examples that Shrylinsky brings up are the villains in the Wolverine arc. The two villains, Lord Darkwind and Apocalypse, are both non-white and they attempt to tamper with Wolverine’s biology thereby tampering with his masculinity. The author infers that this is a sign of the minorities feeling jealous over the rights/non-masculinity that they do not possess. By coming to this conclusion, Shrylinsky shows that Wolverine is the epitome of white masculinity that readers pine to become and that the villains are the minorities who try to either take down those like Wolverine because they feel inferior themselves or